The Information Technology Workforce- A Comparision Of Critical S

Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU Business Faculty Publications Monte Ahuja College of Business Winter 1-1-2012 The Information Technology Workforce: A Comparision Of Critical Skills Of Clients And Service Providers Stephen Hawk University of Wisconsin - Parkside, hawks@uwp.edu Kate M Kaiser Marquette University, kate.kaiser@marquette.edu Tim Goles Texas A&M International University Christine V Bullen Stevens Institute of Technology Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/bus_facpub Part of the Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, Databases and Information Systems Commons, and the Management Information Systems Commons How does access to this work benefit you? Let us know! Publisher's Statement This is an Author’s Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Information Systems Management 01-01-2012, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/ 10580530.2012.634292 Original Published Citation Hawk, S., Kaiser, K.M., Goles, T., Bullen, C.V., Simon, J.C., Beath, C.M., Frampton, K (2012) The information technology workforce: A comparison of critical skills of clients and service providers Information Systems Management, 29(1), 2-12 doi: 10.1080/10580530.2012.634292 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Monte Ahuja College of Business at EngagedScholarship@CSU It has been accepted for inclusion in Business Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU For more information, please contact library.es@csuohio.edu The Information Technology Workforce: A Comparison of Critical Skills of Clients and Service Providers Stephen Hawk1, Kate M Kaiser 2, Tim Goles 3, Christine V Bullen 4, Judith C Simon 5, Cynthia M Beath 6, Kevin P Gallagher 7, and Keith Frampton University of Wisconsin–Parkside, Parkside, Wisconsin, USA Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas, USA Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, Kentucky, USA Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia In this article the authors explore similarities and differences in skill needs of IT service providers and the firms that providers service (clients) The results show that providers and clients are more similar than different with regard to desired skills Client firms emphasize technical skills for new hires more than providers despite saying that these are the skills they would outsource to providers The results have implications for organizations’ recruiting and retention, for individuals’ career development, and for educational programs Keywords skills; information technology; service provider; IT workforce; project management; human resources; global; offshore; entry-level; mid-level THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) WORKFORCE IT executives and academics alike continue to view IT workforce issues with concern (Luftman, Kempaiah, & Rigoni, 2009) On the supply side, the number of students graduating with IT-related degrees remains low, while demographic forces such as impending baby-boomer retirements threaten a further reduction of IT workers (Dychwald, Erickson, & Morison, 2006) On the demand side, increasing emphasis on business transformation (e.g., extending the value chain) coupled with increasing globalization are driving growth of the IT workforce This situation is further complicated by changes in the skill sets required in IT professionals The net result is a widening gap between a growing demand for and an insufficient supply of workers possessing future-oriented skills (Bureau of Labor Address correspondence to Stephen Hawk, University of Wisconsin–Parkside, School of Business and Technology, 900 Wood Road, Kenosha, WI 53141, USA E-mail: hawks@uwp.edu Statistics, 2008–2009) Trends in information delivery also create needs for changing skills For example, the recent trend toward global sourcing emphasizes different skills than providing those same IT services internally The expectations of skills for IT professionals of today are much less technically oriented than the expectations of IT professionals of even five years ago A number of stakeholders benefit from a robust IT workforce, one with relevant and in-demand skills Firms outside the IT industry (that is, firms whose primary purpose is to provide non-IT goods or services) with an internal IT staff depend heavily on critical skills that support their core competencies Firms whose primary business is providing IT services are especially reliant on skilled IT professionals The workforce is their bread and butter, while their clients depend on them to supplement skills the clients not want to employ in house or have difficulty recruiting and retaining These organizations, both providers and their clients, are motivated to develop, challenge, and engage their staff, thereby increasing retention (Moore, 2000) This can be accomplished by upgrading skills and searching for new hires with desired skills Organizations depend heavily on the educational institutions that feed their pipeline University programs must maintain relevance in order to supply fresh skills Understanding the skills demanded by employers is important for universities when revising their IT programs so their students graduate with the right portfolio of skills From the individual perspective, experienced IT professionals may be in a cherished position because they possess high demand skills However, they must always be aware of changes in skills sought by employers of IT talent so that they continue to upgrade their value Knowing what skills are most desired provides a guide for their career choices, whether they are at the college level or have years of experience but looking to enhance their marketability The IT workforce is composed of workers employed by providers of IT services and products (hereafter termed “providers”) and workers employed by the organizations who engage the providers (referred to as “clients”) The demand for skills impacts both sets of employees and may be exacerbated by assumptions of where to get what skills In this research the authors explore why both client and provider organizations need to be aware of their similarities and differences in order to adequately plan staffing models Both types of firms are competing for the same pool of talent even though some organizations concentrate on hiring IT workers with certain niche skills while others seek a broader portfolio of skill sets With the increasing globalization of business in general, and the IT industry in particular, the pool of IT talent is likewise distributed, recruited, and employed globally LITERATURE REVIEW Scholars investigating skills desired of IT professionals by their employers have reported diverse findings over time The rise and fall of certain skill sets has paralleled the evolutionary development of the IT function In the 1970s IT was viewed as a support function, not a strategic one Consequently, technical skills were strongly preferred over managerial and business skills (Byrd, Lewis, & Turner, 2004; Roark, 1976) During the 1980s executives began to recognize the strategic potential inherent in IT (Porter & Millar, 1985; Sethi & King, 1994) This was accompanied by more emphasis on managerial and business skills, although technical skills remained important (Leitheiser, 1992; Nelson, 1991) As the importance of networks grew in the 1990s and the IT function became less centralized, the need for business and organizational skills increased (Lee, Trauth, & Farwell, 1995; Todd, McKeen, & Gallupe, 1995) Accompanying developments of the new millennium (e.g., the rise of the Internet, globalization, and increased emphasis on sourcing), there has been a growing consensus that IT professionals are expected to possess a blend of technical, organizational, business, and management skills (Bassellier & Benbasat, 2004; Byrd et al., 2004) Further complicating the situation is the tendency for technical skills to become obsolete much more rapidly than in the past (Prabhakar, Litecky, & Arnett, 2005), and the expectation by employers that IT professionals should possess an expanding number and variety of skills (Gallivan, Truex, & Kvasny, 2004) While there is now general agreement that IT professionals are expected to possess a combination of diverse skills, there is less agreement on precisely what these skills are Part of the difficulty lies in the fast-changing nature of the profession Today’s Java is tomorrow’s FORTRAN Today’s internal IS function is tomorrow’s outsourced function But a more fundamental problem is a lack of consistency in identifying and categorizing IT skills, and the resultant difficulty in comparing and contrasting skill categories over time For example, two studies of IT skills were published in MIS Quarterly in 1995 One used three skill categories; technical, business, and system (Todd et al., 1995), while the other used four; technical specialties, technology management, business functional, and interpersonal/management (Lee et al., 1995) Both categorizations have been used in subsequent studies (e.g., Byrd et al., 2004; Lee & Lee, 2006) This inconsistency hampers the field’s ability to integrate studies and build cumulative theory RESEARCH OBJECTIVES We sought to understand the types of skills that are most critical for firms—both client and provider—to retain in house (obtained from their own employees) It is important for organizations to protect these resources in order to service organizational needs The pipeline of talent manifests different strengths during a professional’s career Responsibilities evolve over time Therefore we also requested data about the types of skills for two levels of workers: entry-level and mid-level The Society for Information Management (SIM), an association of senior IT executives and academics, sponsored this research project to understand the IT skills that organizations desire SIM provided its membership list to the research team, encouraging members to participate, supporting virtual project team meetings, and facilitating distribution of the findings via workshops and publications The research project was conducted in two phases by a team of academics and practitioners Phase one involved data collection about IT professionals who work in the IT units of client organizations: that is, those organizations who are potential buyers of services The results from phase one indicate that non-IT industry firms prefer business domain skills and project management skills over technical skills (Zwieg et al., 2006) In phase one clients said they would seek a number of skills from IT providers with an emphasis on outsourcing technical skills related to application development and infrastructure management The results from phase one indicate that clients plan to increase the proportion of their IT work carried out by IT providers in the future and that an increasing share of this work would be carried out by provider staff working in offshore locations While phase one sheds light on skills demanded by client organizations, these results may not apply well to IT service providers The skills expected of providers by their clients suggest the need for a different skill profile on the part of providers in order for them to meet client expectations Therefore information provided by phase one to university programs, IT professionals, and employers of IT professionals may not apply well when it comes to meeting the skill needs of IT service providers Consequently, we conducted phase two, collecting data from a global sample of organizations that provide IT services to others Given the increasing use of outsourcing as a means of providing IT staff, these providers will employ an increasing share of the IT workforce Extending the focus of research on IT skills to include IT providers is therefore necessary in order to provide a more comprehensive depiction of skills needed by the IT workforce overall Although several studies have examined IT skill needs of client organizations, we are not aware of studies about IT skill needs of IT service providers Throughout the article we will refer to the organizations from phase one and two as clients and providers, respectively We report on and compare the findings of these two phases throughout this report but highlight the more recent data collected from providers The investigation focused on the following questions: A What are the most critical IT skills for client organizations to retain in house? B What are the most critical IT skills for provider organizations to retain in house? A What skills client organizations desire for entrylevel IT professionals? B What skills provider organizations desire for entrylevel IT professionals? A What skills client organizations desire for mid-level IT professionals? B What skills provider organizations desire for midlevel IT professionals? What differences client and provider organizations have with respect to critical, entry-level, and mid-level skills of IT professionals? METHODS Phase One: Client Organizations This extended research project occurred in two phases Phase one began in 2005 Twenty researchers and practitioners interviewed 104 senior IT executives regarding current and future workforce skill requirements and related trends Central to the interviews were questions regarding skills that are critical to keep in-house, and skills sought when hiring at the entry and mid-levels The research team used a list of skills as a checklist during interviews to record which skills were elicited by respondents as being critical to keep in house, or important when hiring at entry and mid-levels This list was developed by the research team and was reviewed by a panel of experts and by senior IT managers in a pilot study Pilot study interviews were conducted to review the initial list of skills for possible revisions and additions This resulted in additional skills being included in the list Client Demographics The mix of industries of participant organizations is shown in Table The “Other” category includes education, health care, not-for-profit, government, retail, entertainment, logistics, delivery services, etc There were 89 usable respondents TABLE Phase one: Client organizations by industry and size Industry Heavy Industry Finance and Insurance Professional Services Other Total SME Large Total % 11 12 30 18 14 19 59 22 17 19 31 89 24.7 19.1 21.3 34.8 100 SME is